Building materials in general, and support elements in particular, are often large, heavy, costly, difficult to transport, difficult to erect, and/or difficult to deploy. Building projects and/or other endeavors (e.g., military, infrastructure, and/or humanitarian projects) at remote locations can be inhibited by difficult terrain, climate, or distance from large civil infrastructure. Lightweight and/or collapsible materials and support elements are more easily transported, but suffer from decreased stability and/or strength.
The availability of sustainable energy, particularly electricity, has been limited in remote locations such as small villages or scientific research sites due to terrain, climate, or distance from large civil infrastructure. Wind turbines are frequently used for producing electrical power, however, they usually require heavy and bulky towers in order to expose the turbine to higher wind velocities (Griffin, “WindPACT Turbine Design Scaling Studies Technical Area 1—Composite Blades for 80- to 120-Meter Rotor,” 21 Mar. 2000-15 Mar. 2001. 44 Pp, 2001, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). The mass of the tower and the equipment required for its installation increases exponentially with height (G. E. Concepts, LLC, “Addendum to WindPACT Turbine Design Scaling Studies Technical Area 3—Self-Erecting Tower and Nacelle Feasibility,” 2002, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). This limits the installed power at any location with rudimentary roads to the carrying capacity of people and/or light transportation equipment (D. Blattner and I. Sons, “A Self-Erecting Method for Wind Turbines. Phase 1: Feasibility and Preliminary Design”, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety). Additional technologies to address these and other deficiencies in the field are needed.
Deployable wings allow for specialized aircraft to be easily transported to locations where the craft will be used. Deployable wings have been devised using various design concepts over a period of many years. The most notable technologies have been mechanically hinged wings, pressurized inflatable fabric wings and post-rigidized inflatable wings. Mechanical hinging is the simplest and most common method for folding a traditional aircraft wing. This design has the advantage of simplicity and ease of adaptation to thin chord wings. However, each mechanical hinge can only reduce the wingspan by a maximum of 50%, therefore each additional reduction in stowed length doubles the number of hinged joints, resulting in an exponential increase in mass and complexity. This exponential increase in mass causes structural deficiencies and leads to reliability problems. Inflatable wings solve the mass problems of mechanically hinged wings. Inflatable wings are composed of flexible fabric material that is fabricated into a segmented compartmentalized structure and is pneumatically inflated to extend to its full size, supported entirely by internal pressure. Since inflatable wings are made of fabric, they are capable of high length and volume reduction ratios. Their low mass allows them to be deployed in seconds or less. Like the hinged wing, inflatable wings are re-stowable and re-deployable. While inflatable wings have very high deployment reliability, continuous positive pressure is preferred to maintain structural integrity of the wing. This results in a vulnerability to loss of pressure from leaks or punctures. In addition, inflatable fabric wings have a significantly lower buckling moment compared to rigid wings. The two fundamental disadvantages of positively inflated wing structures are stiffness (i.e., resistance to buckling) and vulnerability to pressure loss. Both can be improved upon by rigidizing (e.g., chemical post-rigidizing) the flexible wing fabric shortly after inflation. By encapsulating the fabric fibers in a rigidizable matrix and curing the matrix after the wings have been deployed, the fabric wing becomes a structural composite. Current structures have two main disadvantages: (1) slow matrix curing speed, and (2) lack of a lightweight and convenient mechanism for activation of matrix curing. Additional technologies to address these and other deficiencies in the field are needed.